life, and may be directed with equal intensity to every one of the offspring. This long continuance of tender and disinterested parental affection, which secures to a greater or less extent a reciprocal affection on the part of children to their parents, and of brotherly and sisterly affection to each other, is the means of forming the human being into a member of the larger circle which he is to enter in after-life. The protracted period of infancy, childhood, and youth serves a still higher purpose than that of forming natural attachments and habits that fit men for societary life. During early life the germs of higher principles, loves, and habits are formed than those which relate merely to temporal life. Those states which, in the writings of the Church, are called remains, are formed in the mind in early lifestates of love to the Lord and love to the neighbour, which, when developed, fit man for angelic as well as for human society. Love to parents forms the germ of love to the Lord, and brotherly and sisterly love forms the germ of love to the neighbour. Thus we see that the law of love to God and love to the neighbour, on which hang all the law and the prophets, is working in us from our earliest life, to prepare us for its final establishment by being written in our hearts.

To carry forward this good work in their offspring, parents must be united not merely by the bond of sexual but of conjugal love, that is, not only by natural but by spiritual love. This only is true marriage, and this only serves to make parents the means both of transmitting good inclinations to their children and of educating them into right principles and a righteous life.

But we must postpone the further consideration of this subject to a future number. EDITOR.

WHAT WOMEN HAVE DONE FOR THE WORLD.

(LEO GRINDON.)

VIII.

A BEAUTIFUL illustration of what comes of the influence of a good wife is contained in the Memoirs of the celebrated Sir James Mackintosh, the philosophical politician and historian, the upright and merciful judge. "Allow me," he says, "in justice to her memory, to tell you who she was, and what I owed her. I was guided in my choice only by the blind affection of my youth. I found an intelligent companion and a tender friend; a prudent monitress, the most faithful of wives, and a

mother as tender as children ever had the misfortune to lose. I met a woman who by the tender management of my weaknesses gradually corrected the most pernicious of them. She became prudent from affection; and though of the most generous nature, she was taught economy and frugality by her love for me. During the most critical period of my life, she preserved order in my affairs, from the care of which she relieved me. She gently reclaimed me from dissipation; she propped my weak and irresolute nature; she urged my indolence to all the exertions that have been useful or creditable to me; and she was perpetually at hand to admonish my heedlessness and improvidence. To her I owe whatever I am; to her, whatever I shall be. In her solicitude for my interest she never for a moment forgot my feelings or my character. Even in her occasional resentment, for which I but too often gave her cause (would to God I could recall those moments!), she had no sullenness or acrimony. Her feelings were warm and impetuous, but she was placable, tender, and constant. Such was she whom I have lost, and I have lost her when her excellent natural sense was improving; when eight years of struggle and distress had bound us fast together, and moulded our tempers to each other; when a knowledge of her worth had refined my youthful love into friendship,—this before age had deprived it of its original ardour. I lost her (alas!), the choice of my youth, and the partner of my misfortunes, at a moment when I had the prospect of her sharing my better days."

"The philosophy which I have learned," proceeds this excellent

"teaches me only that virtue and friendship are the greatest of human blessings, and that their loss is irreparable. It aggravates my calamity, instead of consoling me. My wounded heart seeks another consolation. I seek relief, and find it, in the soothing hope and conviction that a Benevolent Wisdom inflicts the chastisements as well as bestows the enjoyments of human life; that Superintending Goodness will one day enlighten the darkness which surrounds our nature and hangs over our prospects; that this dreary and wretched life is not the whole of man; that an animal so sagacious and provident, and capable of such proficiency in science and virtue, is not like the beasts that perish; that there is a dwelling-place prepared for the spirits of the just, and that the ways of God will yet be vindicated to man."

Similar in spirit and results, though in detail quite different, is the delightful record of the conjugal influence of Lady Murchison, wife of

the renowned geologist. Not only was her influence in matters of homelife sweet and delicate as that of a guardian angel-in the same most assuredly lay the mainspring of the success of Sir Roderick as a man of science. The outside world knows little of the toils, anxieties, and perplexities which must be faced and conquered by the men who attain unquestioned scientific eminence, and who possess, at the same time, the sincere personal respect of all who are associated with them. Neither does the outside world know how much of the honour and triumph comes in the first instance of the sympathy of the judicious adviser and consoler who stands beside the husband in his hard struggles, and who many a time, as in the present instance, directly co-operates in his work and enterprises. It was by Lady Murchison, in early days, that the powerful mind which it so happily fell to her lot to influence, was diverted from the commonplace occupations of a retired Peninsular captain to the ennobling pursuits in which thenceforward husband and wife were mutually engaged. Ever by his side, just at the period of life when a noble woman's encouragement and inspiration are most valuable to a man of genius, and most sure to be effective, it was she who gave enthusiasm to Sir Roderick's peculiar talents, and led them on to their full development. Sketch-book in hand, she was his companion during all those persevering explorations in Switzerland, Italy, Germany, on the southern and eastern coasts of England, and in the Highlands of Scotland, which have rendered the name of Murchison illustrious in every part of the civilized world. Ever by his side, she was his companion no less constantly in the quiet study where he penned his great work on the Silurian strata, the latter investigated during the years 1831-1839. Her husband's friends, as in all genuine conjugal unions, were likewise her friends. Among them-rare privilege for any woman, and sufficiently declaring her nature and powers-were Alexander Humboldt, Conybeare, Sedgwick, Lyell, Buckland, and Delabeche; and whoever it became her congenial opportunity to entertain as a guest, she could converse with on his own particular subject,—this nearly to the close of her shining life, which extended to within a fraction of eighty years.

The memorials of such women as Lady Murchison constitute a standing protest against the popular doctrine that men of great talents and abilities marry "badly." The men justly denominated "able" and “talented” in high degree, do not by any means form the majority of their sex, though were the preliminary credentials self-esteem and self-conceit, the class would probably comprise more than any other

section of the world's inhabitants; to make exact observations, and get at the truth, would seem, accordingly, to be not so very difficult; the lives of the able and talented are also more accessible to observation. How comes it then that the doctrine in question holds its place? Assuredly because people have never given themselves the trouble to inquire whether it is founded upon fact. In any case, "badly," as an epithet applied to marrying, generally means nothing more than not in conformity with some weak personal prejudice as to what is good. Abreast of the inquiry, it is hardly necessary to point out, should be put the very plain and indisputable fact that whatever number of the really able and talented marry foolishly, there is every bit as much unwise marrying on the part of the noodles, the dunces, and the average men. It may be, and probably is quite true, that a man brilliant in literature or science, distinguished as a scholar, or for his conversational powers, is seldom found wedded to a woman who is remarkable after the same manner. How rarely, indeed, do the intellectual characteristics of a married couple of any rank or quality correspond to a degree really considerable, unless when, likeliest case of all, there is no talent or intellectual aptitude on either side, dulness answering to dulness, negative to negative, the vacant to the But in neither case does it follow that the marriage is an infelicitous one, or that the choice made by the husband has been "bad." Infelicity is much more imminent when a man of refined tastes takes for his wife a woman conspicuous for vulgarity either of manner, or dress, or speech, than when she simply holds different opinions; prefers, perchance, music to mathematics, or the conversion of the Jews to philology or chemistry. On the woman's side, in parallel order, it is seldom that she is so much perturbed by finding herself her husband's inferior in matters of learning, as by having to endure an incurable sloven, the antithesis of her own tidiness and neatness; or worse still, a man who has never learned to practise the virtue which yields precedence only to godliness. The secret of happiness, both in love and friendship, and with the single and the married alike, consists not in repetition or in identity, but in harmony and congeniality, the sweet adjustment described by the minstrel in those beautiful lines :

vacant.

"The verse and music bore an equal part,

And art reflected poetry on art."

Doubtless, upon similarity of taste arise the most exquisite of gratifications; but that the want of it is detrimental to happiness by no means follows.

Sara Coleridge used to maintain that a wife, whether young or old, may pass her evenings most agreeably in the presence of her husband, occupied with her sewing or knitting-needle, conscious that he is still better occupied, perhaps with his pencil, perhaps with his pen, though he may but speak to her, and cast his eyes upon her from time to time; that such evenings, though quiet, almost silent, being nevertheless charged with love, may be looked forward to with great desire, and remembered, when they have passed away for ever, with the deepest sorrow for their loss. Women being naturally disposed to admire power of any kind, can make themselves quite happy in simply watching their husband's work. Though they do not quite understand, they take pride in him and in what he achieves; and after all the disproportion there may be in their attainments, the man of talent, when he marries, is thus always sure of being valued by one at least of his generation, and to be valued by one's wife is better a thousand times than to be valued by every one except the wife. Wieland, whose conjugal felicity has been celebrated almost as much as himself, says in a letter written after his wife's death, that if he but knew that she was in the room, or if at times she just stepped in and said a word or two, that was enough to gladden him, and this though she took no part in his express employments, having vocations of her own, in their way quite as useful to her family and to society. Some of the happiest and most loving couples are those who, like Wieland and his wife, are too fully occupied in their dissimilar ways to spend much time in actual company, even when the determinate business duties of the day, which necessarily keep them asunder, are completed. How seldom do we see both the sun and moon at once! They go their own respective ways, and through their divergence man is enabled to rejoice.

The whole matter, the entire theory of mésalliances wants revision. Certainly very much of what is popularly called marrying "badly" would prove, on a fair measurement of the results, to be entitled to a very different appellation. It is marrying badly, on the part of a woman, when she consents to be the partner of a man whom she cannot absolutely trust in everything. If she cannot be perfectly restful, if she is in any degree speculative or doubtful, no matter what the proffered purse or social position may be, to designate the match a "good" one is untruthful and ridiculous. Contrariwise, whatever the simplicity and unpretentiousness, no match is bad where the household atmosphere is one of exquisite refinement. If refinement supplies the